About

Working-class wonk and proud of it. Yah got a problem with that?

Before I got into financial difficulties a year ago and was forced offline, I wrote several blogs, including: Omnium; Ethel, the Early-Warning Frog; and Litblogs – a blog devoted to reviewing literary blogs and blogs that featured just plain good writing.I also wrote the breakthrough blog, Dispatch from the Trenches, later moved and renamed The Revolution (no longer available), which was one of the first single-issue blogs and one of the earliest to cover working-class issues exclusively. Somewhat later, I started the first (to my knowledge) blogzine, BlogTower (also no longer available).

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8 responses to “About”

Mick:
Wow! I just found your site while looking for info regarding corporate statehood and the MAI. Not sure how you came up, but I’m glad I clicked! You’re painfully insightful and succinct in your ability to relate facts which have human faces. I will continue to visit your site; I’m thankful for your energy and drive to create a site where you can be heard and others can escape from the madness of the disengaged.
Thanks again,
Laura

Given the topics, yes it’s good (even if it sounds stupid…). I think one of the reasons people bury their heads in the sand is because thinking about job insecurity is too painful until it hits them. (They simply don’t read the kinds of things you write about.) In my experience, people have only half listened when I’ve tried to relate stories of at least eight of my family members who have been laid off or lost established small businesses within the last 20 years: A machine shop owner/operator, an auto parts store owner, a dairy farmer, a bookkeeper for a large lumbermill, two major corporation mid-level vps forced into early retirement and two chemists. Maybe they were all just slouches…
Laura

It doesn’t sound stupid, it sounded as if what I write actually hurts to read. Which would go a long way toward explaining some of the responses I get. Otherwise, you were very complimentary, which I certainly appreciate.

But I’d suggest from what you say that you might want to check out the Matewan Chronicles. That’s another of my blogs and focused exclusively on the Class War (which your family certainly seems to have suffered from) and employee rights.

Today opponents of the Bush Library and Institute vowed to continue their fight within the 11 million member United Methodist Church to deny approval to Southern Methodist University (SMU) to host the Bush complex.

The South Central Jurisdictional Conference of the United Methodist Church will meet in Dallas from July 15-19, 2008, when it will be asked by SMU to approve the use of university land for the Bush complex, which will include a partisan political institute operated totally by the Bush Foundation. United Methodist opponents of the Bush complex will ask the 290 elected delegates to the Conference to vote against this request. The delegates in the South Central Jurisdictional Conference represent the 1.83 million United Methodists living in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

Bishop Joe A. Wilson explains: “Even though the 21 member Mission Council approved by a vote of 10-4 the use of the SMU property for the Library and partisan Policy Institute, this decision must be ratified by the larger Jurisdictional Conference which meets in July of 2008.” The rules of the Jurisdiction state that, “all actions taken by the Council shall be valid and in full effect…..until the next regular session of The Conference.” He adds, “to place a partisan policy Think Tank, with no oversight by the church and university, on the grounds of a United Methodist Institution, is an issue the Jurisdictional Conference must not take lightly.”

“The placement of the George W. Bush Library and the establishment of an Institute to promote the policies of this president at Southern Methodist University would be a tragedy,” said Bishop William Boyd Grove. “The policies of the Bush administration are in direct conflict with the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church on issues of war and peace, civil liberties and human rights, care for the environment, and health care. SMU is a university of the church and is home to one of our outstanding theological seminaries. Its United Methodist identity and its moral authority would be seriously compromised were it to be identified with the policies of George W. Bush in this way.”

“To place a partisan institute on the campus of a United Methodist university is unacceptable,” said the Reverend Andrew Weaver, “especially when it will espouse the policies and values of an administration that has advocated torture, violated international law, and left the constitution in shambles. We want SMU to be a great university, not a propaganda machine for the Bush administration.”

Organizers of the effort question the educational value of the Bush complex, pointing to Executive Order 13233, which provides former Presidents with virtually unlimited powers to deny or grant access to documents generated under their administrations. Bishop C. Joseph Sprague observed, “last spring the Faculty Senate and the history faculty at SMU issued statements criticizing the Executive Order as incompatible with the goals of providing public and scholarly access to federal documents. It is a great concern when a large number of the faculty at a United Methodist university question the educational value of a project.”

Bishop Kenneth W. Hicks noted, “in February of 2007, bishops, clergy and laity of the United Methodist Church began a petition calling for the SMU trustees and the UMC to reject the Bush project. That petition (www. protectSMU.org) now has the signatures of 15 UMC bishops and more than 10,800 Christians (mostly United Methodists) and persons of conscience. We are very much encouraged by the national and international response that we have garnered.”

Bishop Susan M. Morrison observed, “while I respect the office of the presidency, presidential libraries are created, partly, to celebrate the legacies of particular presidents. Since George W. Bush’s leadership has been so problematic and contrary to much of our Social Principles, it does not seem appropriate to place this library in the midst of one of our celebrated educational institutions.”

Hi Mick, I was following up on something and came upon a comment by Rev Andrew Weaver in The Times (London). I knew about most of the stuff (neocons and Roman Catholicism) he had written but had never come across him before.
I did a search and came upon your Talk 2 Action blog about his death. It was a shock to hear he had died but your obituary was excellent and I thank you for it.

Take care
Mick

“The thing the sixties did was show us the possibilities and the responsibility we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibilities” John Lennon